


Through Temper and Tranquility

by chronicAngel



Series: Through All Things [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Engagement, F/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 04:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18542080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: Neither of them has ever been the sort for a fancy sort of date. Date nights for the two of them are dropping Bec off at John's so they have the apartment to themselves and ordering pizza, then sitting on the couch and taking turns choosing stuff to watch on Netflix (which often leads to their weeks alternating between BoJack Horseman and Blue Planet and leaves Netflix wildly confused about what to recommend them) until nine o'clock.





	Through Temper and Tranquility

**Author's Note:**

> Fig and I discussed so many terrible things about Dave and Jade getting engaged/married so I bestow upon you these gifts.

When Dave proposes to her, it's like something out of a movie or a cheesy book. Something she'd watch on the couch with Karkat when he was out grocery shopping because she knows he hates this exact sort of overdramatic, cheesy nonsense.

She feels like an idiot for not seeing it coming. Neither of them has ever been the sort for a fancy sort of date. Date nights for the two of them are dropping Bec off at John's so they have the apartment to themselves and ordering pizza, then sitting on the couch and taking turns choosing stuff to watch on Netflix (which often leads to their weeks alternating between BoJack Horseman and Blue Planet and leaves Netflix wildly confused about what to recommend them) until nine o'clock.

So when it's date night and Dave surprises her on the way back to the apartment from dropping Bec off by telling her that they should go to that new sushi place that just opened up downtown (not that she's complaining, Jade is literally always up for sushi), she is more than a little startled. It's a nice place, so they ultimately still have to go back to the apartment and they end up ~~making out~~ dawdling for twenty minutes before they change into their nice clothes. She's almost able to talk him into just staying at the apartment and ordering pizza like usual before he urges that she loves sushi and they are so rarely able to go out and do something nice, which is only technically true. They totally _could_ go out more often if they wanted to, they just rarely do. (This probably should have been her first clue, but Jade is notoriously clueless.)

It is Dave's turn to pick the music in the car (they take turns in most things just to keep things civil and it has worked well for them so far) and so they are on their way to a particularly fancy date night at an only pretty fancy restaurant being serenaded by the sounds of Childish Gambino's "Because the Internet" album. Jade, unlike basically all of their other friends (at least, those who are not related to Dave, and even that category is not to be entirely excluded because Rose certainly cannot be), does not hate rap. They are in the middle of "Death By Numbers" when he starts searching for parking and they're at the beginning of "urn" by the time he finds it.

In contrast, the restaurant is playing piano music when they walk in and there's actually a woman standing with a microphone by the wall. It's not quite a stage, which makes her think that this is probably an independent artist who approached the restaurant about performing there to gain awareness for their music. _It's always nice to see places supporting local artists,_ Jade thinks, looking at her boyfriend with a soft smile. She is singing a soft song by the time they are seated (which surprisingly doesn't take very long, although that might have to do with the fact that it is eight on a Thursday evening).

"Ooh, they've got Texas rolls here," he says, and she can see the vaguest outline of his eyes widening behind his sunglasses. The light in the room is dim, but of course, her eyes are not particularly photosensitive.

"Do you wanna get that and... hmm, maybe a Las Vegas roll, a Fire Dragon roll, and a Mango Tango roll?" She looks up from the menu to his face and catches him staring at her, everything she can see of his face gone completely soft. She doesn't know how long he's been just looking at her like that, but she feels her cheeks heating up in embarrassment anyway.

His smile widens just slightly when he notices that she's blushing and he looks back down at his own menu to double-check what each of the ones she's just suggested are. "Yeah, those all sound good to me. Little bit of spicy, little bit of sweet, and a little bit of savory. Plus enough that you'll be full and I'll get extra." She sticks her tongue out at him and closes her menu with a snap.

When the waiter comes to their table to ask for their drinks, they say that actually, they're ready to order their food too, and the guy seems pleasantly surprised. She just gets water (with lemon) and orders a Coke for him, and then tells him the rolls that they want and tries not to let her face heat up as she feels Dave staring at her again. When the waiter leaves, she shoots him a look and reaches over to hold his hand on the table. He happily tangles their fingers. "You're being awfully sappy for a guy who hates romcoms today, Strider," she teases.

"Uh, yeah, except this isn't a romcom, this is my real life, Harley," he teases right back, and she rolls her eyes.

Their food takes an inordinately long amount of time to reach the table, but she's happy to just watch Dave's face even as he seems to be growing more and more antsy. She goes through two entire glasses of water before their food finally gets to the table, and she feels a self-satisfied smile grow on her face because it would have taken less time to just order the pizza. She chooses not to say anything about it.

"Your birthday is coming up," he says casually, and she pauses for a moment, glancing down at her fingers where they are twined with his and the colorful reminder rings that she's been using to remember things like that since she was five. Sure enough, there's a bright green little ring in the middle of her first and second knuckle on her pointer finger. It means her birthday is sometime in the next few days. "It's tomorrow, actually," he adds.

"So it is," she responds, cheery. "Which means _yours_ is in three days. So what do you want to do for it?" Dave is much better at remembering his own birthday than she is, but he's also basically the worst at coming up with plans for it. John and Rose usually have to drag the two of them out for it (well, really, it's the three of them dragging Dave out for it, as Jade always forms the planning committee, but he's very persuasive when it comes to getting her to stay in the apartment with him).

He shrugs with one shoulder and shoots her a lop-sided smile before saying, "I'm not too worried about it. I'm sure you and John and Rose'll all come up with something fun to do like usual. Or maybe this'll finally be the year I convince you to let me stay in. I think I'll have a pretty good argument this time." She raises a brow at him curiously, squeezing more lemon juice into her water and then taking a sip. "It's a surprise. You'll see."

"You hate surprises," she points out.

"I do, but _you_ love them."

 _Guilty._ They go quiet for a few minutes as they eat sushi. He makes a big show out of dramatically gulping down his Coca-Cola to drown out the heat of the Fire Dragon roll, she almost snorts Tango Mango laughing at his antics, and by the time they've both chewed and swallowed they're back to just staring contentedly at each other. She hadn't noticed how long it had been since the last time she just looked at his face-- really _looked_ at it.

Eventually he says, "I'm serious. You never do anything fun for your birthday because you're so busy planning mine. We should do something this year." He punctuates the sentence by tossing the last piece of Texas roll in his mouth.

"I'm beginning to suspect that this is the celebration for my birthday," she shoots back, biting a piece of Fire Dragon in half because her mouth is too small for a whole one. He raises a brow high enough that she can see it over the frame of his aviators (a pair of aviators she got him for their anniversary last year because the ones John got him for his thirteenth birthday finally fell apart in an irreparable way after Bec got ahold of them). When she swallows, she adds, "I don't care what we do. I just wanna spend my birthday with you."

His face softens once more and he squeezes her hand on the table. The rest of dinner goes rather similarly, with their stupid inside jokes and light flirting and exchanging stories from the week that the other missed and they'd forgotten about until that moment (Jade occupies this part of the conversation much more than he does as the more forgetful one of the pair, but Dave does talk about how John is considering adopting a dog and she wonders why he didn't talk to her about it).

They're out of the restaurant at almost 9:45, which is only fifteen minutes before the place closes, and she finds herself apologizing to the waiter at least four times before Dave manages to usher her out to the car. The radio starts up right at "urn" where they left it off when he starts the car, and she turns it down to talk to him. "We should probably go pick up Bec soon. You know how annoying John gets about watching him late."

"We already talked about it. He's chill. Don't worry about it." (This should be her second clue, but again, Jade is notoriously bad at noticing what's going on around her.) "Hey, do you wanna catch a movie? It's a little late, but the last couple showings should be good. We can even watch a stupid romcom or something if you want." They do not end up watching a stupid romcom. Instead, Jade picks a horror movie largely so she has an excuse to cuddle up to Dave in the back row (not that she really needs an excuse since she'll do it almost every time anyway). Neither of them is easily scared, so when they're walking out to the car an hour and fifty minutes later they just talk about the bad ending.

"But at least they didn't make me watch that toddler die," she says after pouting for a full ten minutes about the differences from the book while Dave just huffs about the cat dying (and she has to bite her tongue to keep from telling him that actually, the cat dies in every version, although it _is_ different in the book in that the cat isn't evil in the original novel so much as just... dumb). Once they're in the car, she gets so lost in wondering if they have a copy of the book in their apartment currently so she can reread it that she doesn't even notice that they're going in the exact opposite direction from their apartment until he's parking on the street and she doesn't see their building.

She doesn't ask him about it aloud. She'll never complain about time spent with him. Plus, it's almost midnight and she's just a little bit too sleepy to interrogate him right now.

To be precise, it's 11:58. She notices this when her phone starts ringing and she has to fish it out of her purse. (She almost didn't bring the thing but Dave insisted that she should in case someone tried to call her and she supposes that was a good call.) She only glances at the caller ID before she answers. "Karkat? Are you okay? It's almost midnight, you don't usually call this late."

"Yeah, I know, but usually it's not your birthday," he says. She rolls her eyes at him. "Plus, it's not like I'm up late or anything. It's only 9:00 over here." _Right,_ she thinks. _He's in San Fransisco to visit his family._ In the whirlwind of this date night she had forgotten.

"Then technically for you it's not my birthday. Plus, it's not my birthday over here for another..." She pulls the phone away from her ear to glance at the time and sees 23:59 (and she'll take her phone off of military time when she dies, thanks). "I dunno, like twenty seconds probably." She thinks she can actually hear Karkat nodding.

When there's only what must be about eight seconds left, he says, "Hey, uh, Harley. Weird favor to ask. Can you turn around?"

She raises a brow but does as she's asked and she feels her heart stutter in her chest.

"Happy birthday, Jade," Dave says from where he is on the ground on one knee, holding out a box with a ring in it that she can't properly make out because tears are already springing to her eyes just at the sight of him on the ground like that. "I don't know if you remember, but this is the park we went to on our first date as proper girlfriend and boyfriend. I was too excited and showed up like an hour early and you needed to take Bec on a walk so we just went out and grabbed coffee and came here. And about... ten feet away, there's the bench we sat on while Bec rolled around in the grass. Anyway, I was hoping... you'd let this be where our last date as boyfriend and girlfriend was?"

She's freezing (if she'd known they were going to be out walking through a park at midnight she wouldn't have worn a _strapless dress_ ) and when she sucks in a shaky breath and then exhales it in a joyful sob she can see it in the air from how chilly it is (which, duh, it's officially December 1st and really it's amazing there's not snow on the ground). "How long have you planned this?" She sobs, bringing her hand that isn't holding the phone (and _oh, God, Karkat is still on the phone_ ) to wipe at her tears. He just grins at her, face practically glowing in the moonlight (and yeah, that's sort of always happened with light and his skin which is probably thanks to the complete lack of pigment). "You're such an idiot!" She cries, holding out her arms, and he stands and throws his arms around her.

* * *

TG: yo  
TG: egbert  
TG: guess whos marrying your sister  
EB: is it me?  
TG: i sure as fuck hope not  
EB: wait.  
EB: OH MY GOD DUDE I DIDN'T READ THE WHOLE MESSAGE.  
EB: CONGRATULATIONS.


End file.
